


Here Where I Stand

by a17tabris



Category: DCU
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-20
Updated: 2010-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a17tabris/pseuds/a17tabris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kon's thoughts as he comes back to life. Old fic is... not actually that old, but Legion of Three Worlds feels like it was forever ago. Enjoy if you wish to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Where I Stand

**Author's Note:**

> Here is my first piece of DC fic. I went to a prompt generator, and it gave me "a former member of Young Justice overhears people talking about him." So, naturally, I went to the thousand years that Kon just recently spent regenerating. It didn't turn out exactly as I expected: for one thing, I intended it to be more historical in scope— Tim would have found that fascinating, but Kon just wasn't really interested.
> 
> So, here it is.
> 
> Title: Here Where I Stand  
> Fandom: DC  
> Characters/Pairings: Kon-centric, Gen. (You can see Kon/Tim in the extent to which they care for each other if you wish.)  
> Rating: I'm going to say PG.

The first thing Kon heard was Clark’s heartbeat. Not the first thing he heard, really, just the first thing that made any sense to him. There’d been vague sounds for a while, but none of them had been anything, and they might have just been the kinds of things your brain kicks around for a while after you’re dead. This, though: this was a heart, and it was definitely Clark’s. It wasn’t human— all the human heartbeats blurred together, and let the sound of the one Kryptonian shine through.

The one Kryptonian. His own heart wasn’t audible. So maybe he was dead, and all he could do was wait for the sounds to fade away.

He waited for a long time, and they didn’t. After a few months, they even seemed to be getting stronger. Clearer. And not just the heartbeat he’d been focusing on. The sounds of people talking in Canada and Russia, the sounds of planes flying overhead, and the sounds of other heartbeats.

Nothing worth listening to. Especially when he couldn’t seem to move, breathe, speak, do anything. His ears were at the fortress, that much was obvious, but he didn’t seem to really be there. All he could do was listen.

So he did. He listened, trying to make out anything that mattered.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t hear Bart babbling, he couldn’t hear Cassie’s screams, he couldn’t hear the witty banter between Vic and Gar. He couldn’t even hear Tim smirking. Nothing worth hearing. Everyone he wanted to hear was gone.

He tried to stop listening. He tried to let everything blend into one sound. He could almost manage, except for the strength of Clark’s heart. It pounded away over everything, reassuring the world and irritating the hell out of Kon. He wished it would stop.

By Kon’s estimate, it had been about three hundred years when it did. If there’d been any sense to it, he would’ve felt guilty. But it wasn’t his fault. If wishing for Clark to die or go away would have made a difference, his other father would have been guilty centuries ago. At least now he could rest.

It was a good twenty-five years later when he started to notice his name.

Not “Conner.” He’d heard that name all over the place, and it was almost never followed by “Kent.” People were talking about Kon-El. And not just talking. Lecturing. People were studying him in school.

“À le fin du 20e siècle, L’Homme de Fer était mort. Avant sa mort, le Cadmus Project avait créé pour le replacer un enfant, Kon-El.”

If only he’d learned French. Tim could’ve taught him. Tim was good at teaching. He tried to focus his ears away from Quebec— easier said than done when he didn’t seem to have a head to move. He finally caught another name, one he wanted to hear almost as much as his own.

“Now, who can name the four deaths that led to Timothy Drake’s abandoning the mantle of Robin? Yes, Mr. Brande?”

“There was Kon-El’s death in the Crisis of the Fifty-Two. There was Stephanie Brown’s death at the hands of Leslie Tompkins. There was Batman’s first death. And...”

Kon hadn’t been in school for centuries, but pauses like that were still as unpleasant as they’d ever been.

“Yes?”

“I don’t remember, sir.”

Kon hurt for the kid.

“Very well. Anyone remember the fourth reason?”

Kon almost tried to raise the hand he didn’t have before he remembered that he didn’t know the answer either. The class’s silence sounded as miserable as he remembered from Smallville High.

The teacher sighed. “Nobody? Tim Drake was already planning to abandon his position as Robin before his mentor’s death, because of the murder of Bart Allen at the hands of Inertia and the Rogues.”

The class exhaled, and Kon would have held his breath if he’d had any breath to hold.

He was relieved– he hadn’t been the only one to let Tim down– and then he was ashamed of himself for feeling so happy to hear about Bart being killed. He’d known, of course: by this point Bart couldn’t have been anywhere in the Solar System without Kon hearing him. But hearing that he hadn’t just died, hadn’t even just burned out from living too long too fast the way speedsters tended to— it hurt. Because he could’ve stopped it. He could have saved Bart, and he and Bart could have saved Tim.

“Let’s move on.” He realized with shock that he was still listening to the lesson. “Can anyone tell me who became Robin after the departure of Timothy Drake?”

Nobody, Kon wanted to shout. Tim was the only Robin! But he knew it wasn’t true. Tim only ever took the job because it was so necessary and nobody else was doing it. He wondered what would have happened if Tim had been able to convince Dick to go back. The painful shudder of an almost-laugh at the image of the Dick he knew in shiny shorts made Kon suddenly and violently aware that he had something like lungs.

“Anyone? Yes, Ms. Sleevan?”

“Was it Stephanie Brown?” Kon tried to make his lungs snort, but only came out with a slightly less pleasant exhalation.

“No. If you had been paying attention to Mr. Brande’s answer, insufficient as it was, you would have noticed that Drake abandoned the role after her death.”

“My uncle said that she never really died. He said it was just a plot by some doctor.”

Kon turned away from that classroom. No reason to catch the name that would just make him angry, the name of the bastard who thought he could replace Tim. He listened for his name again.

It was surprising just how many opportunities people found to say “kennel.”

The history lessons didn’t please him. They all boiled down to two facts. Kon-El died in 2006, and was instrumental in stopping the first assault by Superman Prime.

It had been alright for that asshole to steal his name, but he was not allowed to be Superman. That role was filled permanently.

Well, not anymore. But it had almost been okay for him to be Superboy: if Dick and Tim could share, so could he.

Superman had to be Clark or nobody.

And the words “first assault” almost brought tears to the eyes he could feel himself growing. How many more of his friends died the second time that lunatic tried to rebuild the universe? He probably could have found out if he’d listened, but he just didn’t want to.

Along with the lungs, he’d acquired a strange kind of tiredness, and for the first time in almost longer than he could remember, he went to sleep.

When he was awakened by his own heart beating, he almost didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t coming from inside, the way it was supposed to. It was just happening, somewhere within the reach of his ears. Or his hearing; who knew if he had ears right now? But there it was, the strange sound that didn’t belong to anyone else, the rhythm of a half-Kryptonian heart.

He listened to it for a long time. It promised that soon– whatever that meant anymore– he would be out. There would be work for him to do. All his old friends might be dead, but after this, once he was free, nobody else would ever have to die because he was too weak.

He might not be able to save Robin, but he’d never have to let him die again.

One day the door opened. He hadn’t even been aware that there was a door. Some people spoke what he recognized as Interlac too late to understand any of it, dropped something somewhere (if only there'd been sunlight, he felt like he would have been alive again. The door opening onto a polar winter really wasn’t helping his new eyes) and left. He knew, again, that they were talking about him.

Whatever they did, it made him grow faster. Or maybe it just made time pass faster, without anything else to look at it was hard to tell. So once again, he went looking for something else.

What he found was Clark.

He listened again, and it was still Clark. The same heartbeat, if a little faster than usual. And from the sound of it, he was in Smallville. For a moment, Kon let himself wish that the past thousand years had been a dream.

He could hear Bart telling him that dreams didn’t work that way. He knew it was just his imagination, but the notion that Bart could tell him anything helped the illusion just before it broke.

But Clark. That was him. Why wasn’t he saying anything, just so Kon could be sure?

Kon laughed, and this time it was almost a real sound. What was he supposed to say? “Sorry I missed the last few centuries, but now I’m back and ready to kick butt?” To them, he’s history.

So is Kon. Clark’s hearing Kon's story right now from what sounds like Jimmy Olsen. All the lessons that Kon’s listened to over the years are being repeated to Clark, so that he too can know about the hero of the fake’s first attack.

Clark’s heart— it reacts wrong. He’s angry.

Clark doesn’t get angry. Especially not at his pals.

Of course it’s not Clark. Kon hears the Smallville Museum explode. He hears the screams of the policemen, melted alive. He hears the reports from the news, telling of how this is just the natural result of letting aliens live on Earth.

And now the sound of his heart is doubled. The freak is there, but so is the real thing. Superman is alive again.

Suddenly, he can’t regenerate fast enough.

Bart can, somehow. That’s him, taunting the murderer. That’s Prime’s terror. He’s still afraid of lightning. Kon tries a laugh, and this time it works almost perfectly. Just a little longer. They’re coming closer.

They’re almost at the North Pole, ready to let him out. He can do it this time. He can save his friends– and the Legion always were his friends– and he can live.

The other one was able to change the world with punches. He and Bart are already back.. Maybe if Kon hits him hard enough, it’ll be enough to save Tim.


End file.
